Beneath the Ever-Bending Sky by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Shadows Long Before Me Lie

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The grey-haired, genial-faced Teler sat with bare feet dangling over the edge of his ketch, as was his habit when he dropped a line into the ocean hoping for a catch. There had been no bites this morning. This gave Maglor a petty kind of satisfaction. Let the optimistic fool chase his prey to another bay, where I no longer have to look upon him.

He would have no such luck, of course. Having spotted Maglor watching, Círdan stowed his line and dove deftly into the waves, swimming with an easy grace toward the shore.

“What do you want?” Maglor asked as the other shed fat drops that darkened the sand at his feet.

“The fish are not biting today.”

It was an inane observation that did not merit an answer. Maglor gave one anyway, equally inane, as had all of their conversations been up to this point. “So I saw.”

The twist of steel in his words did not deter the other. “I thought to dive for shellfish in the shallows. Are they found readily in these parts?”

“I would not know,” said Maglor, who was not in the habit of diving for his food.

“Care to join me? Discovery is more satisfying with two than one, is it not?”

Oh, joy, he thought. “I will pass, thank you ever so much.”

The Teler shrugged. “As you will.”

A week had passed since the insufferable elf had fetched up on this beach, and Maglor chafed at his presence. This was, perhaps, largely to do with the fact that Círdan did not seem to tire of him, no matter how ill-mannered he became. Maglor considered the other as he broke the surface, stowing a scallop in a basket tied with rope to his ankle. It was almost insulting, the way it bobbed merrily in the waves, and its owner seemed entirely too at home here.

There came an amused chortle from the shallows.

“I do not see what you find so funny,” Maglor shot at Ossë.

The meddling maia bared his teeth in a self-satisfied grin. “Relocate, if you are so displeased with the company I have brought.”

How good it would feel to collar the impudent creature, to break his scaly nose with a reproving blow. Foolish in the extreme, however, would such a course be.

“Maybe I will,” Maglor threatened impotently instead.

..<|>..

Maglor’s expression took on a despondency by firelight sharply in contrast to the morose belligerence Círdan was accustomed to by day. The Noldo seemed not mighty, but a small, pitiable thing beside the flickering flames. Loneliness had made a home in his fair features that would put one in mind of noble suffering, if one knew no better. Engrossed as he was with a piece of sea glass, shifting it delicately between adroit fingers, the other did not mark his approach.

“I have not seen its like before,” Círdan remarked. “The colour is enchanting.”

“You would not have,” Maglor told him with a voice almost soft, “seeing as the pigment required cannot be found this side of the great sea. It is a cruel joke of Ossë’s I believe.”

“Capricious and dangerous he may be, but I have not known him to be deliberately cruel. More likely it is a hint.”

The other tensed and all trace of vulnerability abruptly fled. “Why have you come?”

“The sea was generous,” he remarked, holding out a basket of scallops as offering.

Maglor’s eyes fixed still upon the glass. “Keep them.”

“Truthfully, I have more than I can use. You may as well take these.”

The other sat stiffly for a moment longer, and Círdan wondered if he were minded yet to refuse. But at length he looked up warily, and though his words of acceptance were civil enough, it was clear Maglor did not wish to be drawn from the cloak of grim solitude he had drawn around himself this night.

“Worry not, I will trouble you no further,” Círdan assured him.

“Then I bid you good night.”

As Círdan retreated across the shore it seemed to him that the world about them held its breath. All was quiet on land and sea, save for the soft crunch of sand giving way beneath his feet. As moonlight touched its rippling surface with a pearly sheen, even the sea seemed stilled with anticipation. Beside a fire altogether too cheery for his sombre mood, Maglor lifted his face to the sky as if in plea. Círdan knew not what it was he cried to the skies.

..<|>..

On a warm afternoon a week hence, the grey-haired Teler dozed lazily on the foredeck of his ketch. Kicking determinedly through the water, Maglor startled him from repose with a loud knock on the hull. The sight of the other, off-kilter and peering down in puzzlement, was not as satisfying as he had thought it would be.

“Throw down a rope, will you?” he called.

Perhaps the Teler’s patience could indeed wear thin, as the rope, when it came, slapped him casually across the cheek, and it stung.

“I thought you would have better aim than that, Teler!” he shot back snarkily.

“I have a name, Maglor,” Círdan rebuked as he cleared the railing. “I would prefer you use it.”

Maglor merely shrugged and thrust a basket at his chest. “For you.”

“Oysters?” the other asked, peering inside. “You can keep them.”

“That is not how this works, Nōwē,” he chided, frowning. “I return your generosity in kind. You accept.”

“Have you been so long among cynical Men that all must be an exchange?” Círdan quipped. “Or were the Noldor always like this?”

Chastened, he lowered his voice. “No. We too shared freely, in kinder times.”

Something alike to pity, yet not nearly so cloying came over the Teler then. “It will be kinder for you to keep them. I detest the slimy things.”

“I had thought you Falathrim zealous for them,” Maglor jibed lightly, setting the basket down between them. This earned him a chuckle.

“Despite what you may have heard, us Falathrim do not become weak-kneed for everything that comes from the sea.” The boat teetered slightly as Círdan folded his legs and lowered himself to the deck.

Maglor mirrored the gesture. “So it appears.”

The other turned to him with open curiosity then. “Do you enjoy them?”

“Not particularly,” he admitted reluctantly. It was tantamount to confessing he had rooted around in the sand much of the morning for a food he had no intention of partaking in. That, in turn, revealed something far too close to altruism for his liking. From the twinkle in the other’s eye, Maglor suspected that had not passed him by.

They sat for a while in silence, lulled by the rocking of the boat and the soughing of waves against the shore. It was he that broke it, at length. “I did not know you could be roused to annoyance.”

Círdan snorted. “Ulmo give me strength.”

“That rope was aimed true, wasn’t it?” he accused, giving the other a shrewd look.

“Perhaps it was repayment for your rude behaviour,” the Teler suggested, affecting innocence with effortless skill. It was becoming easier to see why Ossë favoured him the longer they talked.

“If it was, I believe you sold it cheaply,” Maglor told him.

At this Círdan raised a questioning eyebrow.

“It left a great deal wanting. The Fëanorian standard for petty revenge is much more exacting.”

“I shall endeavour to extract my due in future,” the other assured.

Maglor contemplated the stark coastal cliffs cradling the shore. Behind the hilly country lay several leagues of grassy plains raked by the salty breeze, and beyond that a fertile country dominated by evergreens. Their shelter was not without appeal. “Who is to say the future will present such an opportunity?”

Círdan looked at him sidelong, all but daring him to flee. “I am sure it will. Unless you intend to transform into the very soul of courtesy overnight…”

“Oh, fear not,” he jested, biting back a cynical laugh. “I am as surly as they come. I shall do no such thing.”

“Good, for I fear you would bore me terribly were you perfectly mannered,” Círdan admitted.

Then, unsettled by the ease that began to worm its way into their interactions, Maglor disembarked as abruptly as he had come.

..<|>..

A promise of autumn hung chill in the clear morning air as Círdan emerged, yawning from below deck. The prospect of brisk, revitalising forays into cool waters was a tantalising one; it played pleasantly through his mind as the breeze carried the sounds of industry to his ears. Maglor had appeared beachside early this morning; an unusual turn of events. By now he had learned his reticent companion preferred not to risk exposure to conversation until noon at the earliest. Occasionally, the other would disappear for days at a time, and Círdan would creep over to his squat to peer quietly through the window, reassuring himself that Maglor had not vanished entirely. Always he found some possession inconspicuously placed on the Noldo’s rough mattress, and began to suspect the other left reassurances for his benefit.

This morning, the dark-haired elf ranged back and forth, methodically sorting tiles on his roof. A growing heap of the broken piled upon the eaves, and a small collection of replacements sat neatly stacked against the wall. From the consternation inherent in Maglor’s stance as he peered down, calculating, Círdan guessed they were too few. Quietly, he began trussing the intact tiles with rope laid alongside, ready to be hoisted, and though Maglor’s glance betrayed that he had noticed, he said nothing.

“A ladder would make this quicker and easier,” Círdan lamented as he scrambled onto the roof, rope in hand.

“And you have one, do you?” Maglor snapped.

“Are you asking, or merely being disagreeable?” Círdan answered cooly. “It would not take me long to knot together a rope ladder, should you wish it.”

Maglor looked away. “I am not some charity case, Nōwē.”

“Did I ever imply that you were?”

He turned back sharply then. “Why do you not just leave? Surely you have done more than enough to absolve your conscience.”

“And you think Ossë would grant me safe passage without you? I would be wrecked before losing sight of the shore.” Though spoken in jest, both understood how likely the words would prove true, should Círdan try it.

Perhaps in sympathy for both of their plights, Maglor’s answer was coloured more with frustration than true anger when it came. “And so you plan to while away your days in my wretched company until you and that weed-bedraggled, fish-breathed excuse for a maia wear me down?”

“That is about the shape of it,” Círdan confirmed.

“Suit yourself, I suppose,” his companion grumbled, brushing his hands of grit. With a resigned sigh he took the offered rope and began to pull as Círdan guided its path.

The sun was nearing its peak by the time the requisite tiles had been scavenged from abandoned buildings dotting the shore. When the last had been placed, Círdan stood back to check their handiwork. Sweat trickled uncomfortably down his neck, and beside him Maglor’s fair face was flushed with exertion. It was not so difficult to convince the other to cool off in the waves.

“How many abide in Mithlond still?” Maglor asked idly as he floated on his back, shielding eyes from the sun with one hand while the other made lazy strokes.

“A touch over three score.”

One voyage-worth of people; a small, lonely number. The last of the Eldar in Middle Earth delayed their leaving for the errand Círdan had set himself. He watched as Maglor’s enquiring mind came to just that conclusion, and the other turned to him with a pained look at odds with the vitriol in his words.

“They tolerate this ridiculous notion of yours? Content, are they, to delay while you waste your time pursuing me?” he accused Círdan, though his expression more rightly accused himself of yet another hurt wrought by his hands.

“We have no such desperation that a few months, nor even a few years could try our patience, Maglor. Mithlond is yet fair.”

It is our home still, went unsaid, yet from the surprised upward cant of Maglor’s eyebrows it seemed he caught the sentiment all the same. Longing for the quiet waters of the firth had begun to tug at him, suffusing his words, pleasant as these warmer climes may be.

“Even your patience shall wear thin eventually,” the other predicted. And Círdan knew then, in the Noldo’s mind, there existed no possible future in which he did not cling like a barnacle to this fading world.

..<|>..

Mere days passed before Maglor was glad of the newly intact roof gracing his dwelling, as the first storm of the turning season sent winds tearing along the coast. He had lain guiltily awake, shifting restlessly atop his rough mattress as they whistled through the eaves, and memory of uncomfortable wave-tossed hours upon a ship long ago drenched his thought. Surely Círdan’s ketch sluiced about the bay in a similar fashion this night. Early he had risen and found his feet turning toward the shore, as concern still frothed within him, long after the winds died down.

Teasingly the waves lapped at his feet as he settled upon an outcrop of rock kissed by the tide, eyes ever roving toward the ketch that now bobbed placidly among the waves. There was approval in the shape of their briny caress. When a figure emerged from the cabin, looking weary but no worse for the wear, Maglor’s heart slowed in relief.

Círdan, as was his habit when he spied Maglor watching, dove promptly into the waves and with flawless strokes made for the shore. Maglor made no attempt to flee.

“The seasons turn,” he observed, as the Teler hoisted himself out of the ocean, dousing the rocky shelf liberally.

“So they do,” he agreed, watching Maglor with quiet anticipation.

He looked away, addressing his next words to the world at large. “There is room enough for two on the shore. And the nights will be kinder, I suspect, between walls that do not lurch in high winds.”

“I should not wish to impose.”

Little of the other’s recent behaviour could be called imposition, in truth, even by Maglor’s reclusive standards. Loath though he may be to admit it, there was a growing regard between them, and Círdan was rarely less than respectful.

“It is no imposition, Nōwē,” he said.

Once, Maglor had tried to purge all that family and community meant from his heart, but had succeeded only in driving it deep below the surface. Perhaps it was a trait quintessential to Eru’s children that could not be wholly drowned, for the more amity he tasted, the more he ached for companionship. Perhaps the other read it in him too, author that he was to the painful longing’s awakening, damn him.

“Then I would be grateful,” Círdan accepted. He hardly raised an eyebrow at the second mattress laid by that Maglor had journeyed miles and endured several nights of busking in beer-soaked inns to trade for.

..<|>..

If one looked carefully they would find signs the squat in which the two elves sheltered slowly became a home. Círdan’s fingertips trailed lightly over pebbles arranged into a symbol of Estë, laying hid beneath florid growths of saltbush. The same motif had been brought to life on a grander scale in Rivendell’s halls. Elrond had been fond of it. Long before becoming the Lord of his own realm he had been in the habit of scratching the symbol beside tent flaps and inscribing it over doors. Who had started the practice, Círdan wondered, he or Maglor?

“Your thoughts are deep, Nōwē.” Maglor’s voice cut through his musings, as the other handed him a roasted shearwater wing, dripping with grease. The bird’s skin, glazed with wild honey to complement its salty flesh had been crisped to perfection. They ate for some time in silence, savouring the taste.

“This is good,” Círdan exalted. “I had not realised how excellent your cooking would be.”

Maglor affected a pout, meant humorously no doubt, but which in the end looked rather sad. “Not many expect culinary prowess from a ragged hermit in the wilderness, I find.”

“Is that what you believe I think of you?” Círdan asked.

“It is what I have become, whether you think it or not.”

Before him coalesced the memory of a youthful warrior prince superimposed upon the weary elf’s countenance. Maglor had been effervescent then, leading a rousing ballad, which all deep enough into their cups at Mereth Aderthad had belted out alongside him. Little difference was there outwardly, and yet there was all the difference in the world. The sorrow undercutting his words was like a stab to the gut.

“That is not what I meant,” Círdan said, smoothing the rough waters between them. “I was merely grateful for the meal.”

But Maglor had perhaps read more in Círdan’s appraising look than he had intended. “Why are you doing this?” the other asked with a sharp voice.

“Long ago,” he explained, “I stood before Ulmo, full of anger as he declared my creaking, primitive ship unfit, and Tol Eressea disappeared into the distance. He was right to hold me back; I would be but bones on the seabed now had he not. It would have been folly to follow the island, and still I almost did. I know what it is to be left behind, Maglor. I cannot wish that upon any other.”

“And if that other would rather be left?” he asked.

“Ah, but you see,” Círdan smiled knowingly, “I do not truly think you wish that.”

Maglor looked away. “Nōwē”, he said when he turned back, “I am not sure you wholly want to go.”

“Perhaps,” Círdan mused, “we are not so different.”

..<|>..

“Does the sea not call to you?” Círdan asked him one day as they gathered vegetables. Finding the old, overrun garden had been good fortune, and better luck still had it been that much was ripe and ready to pick, despite long neglect. Maglor paused, a cluster of tomatoes forgotten in his hand, and leaned against a pitted stone wall.

“I feel the longing in my bones,” he admitted. “I have for years.”

“Then what holds you back?” The other wiped his brow, leaving a dirty streak across it. His basket near brimmed with greens.

“Many things,” Maglor answered, deliberately vague and noncommittal.

There came a shrewd look into his companion’s eye. “And fear is not one of them?”

That was not something Maglor wished to dwell on. He hefted both of their baskets then, and set off trudging down the overgrown path toward the shore, thankful that the slope’s treacherous nature occupied both of them enough to save him from answering for a good while. And even when they reached a gentler incline with kinder surfaces, Círdan kept his silence. He rarely pressed, beyond the first push.

“I had a good thing once,” Maglor explained at length. “Is it so wrong to keep it in my memory, a perfect diamond, rather than return to find it was only ever cut glass?”

“It seems a poor thing to me, to rob yourself of something fine, be it only glass, that you may cradle the ghost of a finer jewel in your mind,” Círdan ventured.

“Then you do not understand.”

“I would not say that,” his companion said gently. “Only, if it were me, I should choose differently.” And Maglor found in his expression a wistfulness that betrayed weighty experience of the matter.

“And what, pray, have you given up that compares?” he prompted, half bitter and half curious.

“Naught, I suppose. I never knew an untroubled land, nor saw the light of the trees,” the other answered, too casually. He downplayed his hand.

“You deflect,” Maglor said flatly. “I am not so foolish as to think the idyllic West the only thing one might pine for.”

Círdan inclined his head briefly at that. “Just so. If the Falas were raised from her watery grave, and Brithombar restored in all her glory, I would return in a heartbeat,” he admitted.

Great seas of green, perfumed with blooms delicate and hardy, rippled in the chill winds of his memory. “As would I to Ard Galen…” he said. There followed a quiet moment, wrapped in reverie, until Maglor broke the silence with a mock shiver. “…but not Himring, though Maedhros might have.”

The startled Teler let out a great gale of laughter then. “We speak of coasts and plains,” he said seriously, once it had passed, “but it is not truly lands that hold your heart is it?”

“No,” Maglor admitted, and thought of family that had once looked upon him with neither pity nor disappointment, of days when pursuits begun with good intent ended almost always well, and of two young peredhil with whom his acquaintance had begun ill, and yet turned to more good than could have been hoped. What, if any, could be regained?

“You should take the risk, my friend,” his companion urged. “Who knows? You may yet find your diamond intact, or better yet, in its place a pearl.”

“Said like a true Teler,” Maglor quipped, attempting to strangle his pain with the same ferocity with which he now washed the greens as Círdan watched on with infuriating calm.

“I have never been fond of your ridiculous gems.”

“They have rather lost their appeal for me too,” Maglor said ruefully.

..<|>..

Around the fire of an evening, Maglor would often sing. He did so unthinkingly, as though falling into an old habit long forgotten, now awoken with the familiarity of companionship. Recently, however, with the weather turning, they found themselves retreating quickly inside to avoid the rain, and Maglor was silent. The window had not yet been shuttered this night, despite frigid drops occasionally gusting in, and through a gap in the clouds the light of Eärendil shone. His weak silvery beam fell upon a small shell in Maglor’s grasp, threaded with a twist of hair, and as Círdan watched his fingers slip over the smooth surface he thought his companion knew not what his hands did.

At first glance the shell seemed unremarkable, but Círdan knew the sea and the life it contained well. Plain as it seemed, this combination of colour and pattern were found along only one stretch of coast, long sunk beneath the waves.

“Where did you come by that?” he asked as mildly as he could manage, biting back curiosity more Noldorin than Telerin.

Maglor startled, realising suddenly what it was he held. The rime Círdan had long known lived in his heart showed in eyes hoary with frost. “I was given it, long ago,” he said, and could have been standing in the first age, so far away seemed his voice.

“Which of the boys was it?” Círdan asked softly.

“Elros,” came the reply, still distant as a dream. “How did you know?”

“It is a child’s gift. Many were bestowed upon me on visits to Sirion’s havens. They dotted those beaches like a pox. No where else have I seen that particular pattern since.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy with memory as Maglor’s fingers lingered on the little lock of hair. “He was not precisely a child at the time,”he said at length.

“No?”

“I found it the day Maedhros and I sent them to Gil-Galad, weighing down a scrap of paper that simply said, ‘do not forget’. In Elros’s writing, not Elrond’s.”

That was unusually cryptic for the forthright young man Círdan had known. “What did it mean?”

Maglor smiled sadly. “I still do not know, precisely. Many things…”

“You loved them.”

“Yes,” the other agreed, his words barely more than breath.

“As did I,” Círdan whispered. “When did you see them last?”

With that Maglor’s attention snapped suddenly to the present. “That is none of your damned business.”

A painful parting it must have been then. He held up hands in a gesture that sued for peace.

Long it was before Maglor spoke again, and so softly did he do so that Círdan almost missed the words. “I did not know,” he said, “that they would be in Eonwë’s camp that night.”

An awful thing it was, that your child, no matter the complexity of that relationship, witness you at your lowest. Worse still, perhaps, to be fully cognisant of the tragedy, as Maglor had been.

“They never hated you. It was rather the opposite, I believe.”

The shell jerked suddenly as Maglor’s fingers tensed. “Do you not see, Nōwē? That is far worse.”

“Not to my mind,” he refuted. “Neither can I bring myself to dislike you.”

How wry was his expression as Maglor raised his right hand, deformed with burns scars still that shimmered silvery in Earendil’s light. “Too easily do some people shackle themselves to the depraved, calling it love, and so corrupt themselves.”

And he hugged arms around his knees as if the depravity he spoke of could be contained with the gesture.

“It is not a wicked thing I see before me,” Círdan replied, carefully setting aside his disgust at the violence those marks represented. Two long ages had passed since Maglor’s sword had swung against an innocent.

“Then you do not see clearly,” his companion snapped, “for so the holy light has judged.”

“Shocking as this may seem,” Círdan argued, gently still, “many things have changed in two ages of the world.”

At this, Maglor could only glare, finding no suitable repartee.

“Tell me truly. Have you isolated yourself for nigh six thousand years for some misguided notion of protection? Against your wickedness?”

When Maglor shook his head it was a confused gesture; not so much a refutation as a denial, as though to shake some unpleasant truth from his head. And he clasped his fingers about the shell as he spoke, holding tightly to still their shaking. “Many things have changed, Nōwē. Some lost things cannot be salvaged.”

“No, they cannot,” he agreed, thinking of the young man who had once travelled upon his ship toward a newly raised island full of promise, and how he had turned his face to the wind and laughed. His flight through the world, all too fleeting, had been one of movement, joy and significance. Círdan came to sit beside Maglor, carefully wrapping an arm around tensed shoulders. It was the first time they had touched so, the first solace of the kind that Maglor had accepted. And Círdan recognised the pose of one loathe to show their tears who barely held back weeping. Humour, of all the ways to diffuse tension between them, was the most tried and true.

“If you think some grouchy, ragged old hermit has the power to corrupt me, then you profoundly overestimate your influence, I am afraid,” he teased.

And instead of tears, uncertain laughter came bubbling forth.

“Come back with me, to Mithlond at least,” he offered. “It does not take great intellect to deduce you are lonely. But you need not be alone.”

Maglor only hung his head. “I cannot.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Maglor: I think you will find I can be quite stubborn, Nōwē.
Círdan: Unfortunately for you, I think you will find I can be just as stubborn as you.

Nōwē is Círdan's original time. It's meaning, sadly is lost to time.

Thank you so much for reading! The good news is the conclusion to this little story is about halfway drafted! However, with a couple of stocking fics to finish this month, you can most likely expect it early in the new year. :)